Astana's Vincenzo Nibali has been disqualified from the Vuelta a España.
Nibali was involved in a big stage two crash with thirty kilometres to go. So his team tried to bring him back up to the leaders.
With just over sixteen kilometres to go, Nibali was around 1.34 behind and held onto the car door of his Astana team, in an act which not only got him to the leaders quicker but was spotted by the television cameras and soon doing the round as a Youtube video.
Nibali eventually dropped off on the final climb of a stage won by Esteban Chaves and when the race jury saw the video, they promptly disqualified Nibali and the Astana the sports director, Alexandre Shefer, who was driving the car.
Race Director Javier Guillén told the press: “We’ve seen the video. They tried to search in the rules, all the possibilities, but you know the decision, to expel the rider.
“I agree with the decision, because I think his attitude is regrettable.
“There is no other possibility — this image is bad for cycling, for the sport. The consequences of this decision are bad for the Vuelta, we have lost a big rider.
“Any other decision would be hard to understand. The rules have to be followed. We have seen the images, I have never seen anything similar before.
"We respect the UCI jury’s call on this — we are sorry for what has happened.”
Source: DSG
